Eighth Sunday After Trinity
‘You give them something to eat’.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
I remember the winter my family went on ‘food stamps’, one of the American government’s primary forms of poverty relief. I was four years old. My father had lost his job, shortly after we had moved to a new house in the country. Winters in rural Illinois are hard. The average temperature is below freezing, and when the crops are harvested, the wind sweeps freely across the fields, creating a bitter chill. Those are my earliest memories of cold and hunger.
We did not have enough to eat, and the food we got was mostly awful and minimally nutritious. I qualified for the free lunch program at my school, where food was also of dubious quality but at least it was there. Outside of term, my lunch at home was usually a small packet of six Nabisco crackers, each with a thin layer of artificial cheese or peanut butter.
This story is not meant to arouse your sympathies for me; I have known real hunger even as an adult, but I am reasonably fed and housed these days. I’ve shared the story to put a face and personality to the brutal fact that, even in advanced economies, people know hunger and it is easy for families to fall down and out. Over 1/3 of the UK population is one large bill away from hardship. These facts should inform how we hear God’s words through the prophet Isaiah:
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
And then, from our Gospel, we know that Christ, worn out and heading for a countryside retreat, found himself surrounded by a desperate crowd, ill and hungry, desperate enough to follow him on foot, so desperate as to go to a deserted place. And there he satisfied them.
The kingdom of God proclaimed by the prophets and embodied by our Lord Jesus is a kingdom of peace and plenty, with rich, free food and total abundance. As people who live the Gospel story and seek that kingdom, we have a responsibility toward those who are materially hungry. As Jesus said to his disciples, ‘You give them something to eat’.
This responsibility is incumbent on us in ordinary times, but also in this extraordinary Age of the Virus. We must all ask ourselves, as the world hurtles toward greater economic crisis: What are we planning to do about it? Are we storing away money and food only for ourselves? Or have we thought ahead, and begun laying aside funds to help those in need? If, like Jesus, we find ourselves surrounded by a desperate crowd of the sick, suffering, and starving — and, let’s be honest, that’s the situation— we should know what to do, even if we are weary. ‘You give them something to eat.’
We cannot think, however, that we have exhausted our responsibilities once we have met the immediate needs of those who are suffering. We seek the kingdom of God, and uphold the dignity of every person. If our earthly kingdoms defy that vision, trapping people and whole areas in poverty, increasing desperation, preventing those made in God’s image from meeting their basic needs or fulfilling their God-given potential — then we have a duty to seek reforms. Change is possible.
* * *
This is not the only lesson in our readings today, however, nor will I have unfolded them enough if I pointed only to material hunger. We just heard this Psalm-verse sung: “You open wide your hand, and fill all things living with plenty.”
God is the life of the material world. Its beauty and abundance, its nourishing substance, are the result of his own goodness. He is particularly the life of the soul. “The Lord is near to those who call upon him, to all who call upon him faithfully’. Our bodies need material bread; who does not know that? But our souls need feeding, too.
You may remember that nearly a year ago, I said that if we faced a famine in this city, we would spare no effort to address it. That is largely what has happened in Cambridge during this pandemic. I felt confident that when I spoke earlier about feeding the hungry, I would find listening ears and responsive hearts, ready to meet the needs here and across the nation and world. But in that same sermon last year, I pointed out that we must also address the spiritual hunger that surrounds us.
Jesus was not only a healer, nor was he always multiplying bread. Christ was also a master and teacher. He taught and embodied a new way of life, and called others to follow him. Even with no place to lay their heads, his disciples found satisfaction in his presence. “You have the words of eternal life,” Peter said to Jesus (John 6:68). Or, as two disciples said on the way to Emmaus: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us, while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the Scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32) They were fed inwardly.
Christ has entrusted that same ministry of teaching and discipleship to us, his followers, the Church. He still says: ‘You give them something to eat’. That may be daunting. We may look at our own resources and think they are not enough: only five loaves, only two fish to feed 5000; only a little faith; only a little knowledge of the Scriptures. But in the hands of Christ, all things may be opened and multiplied to feed the hungry.